Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 96
September 17, 2018
Is the world safer than it was in 2008? Ten Guardian writers think not
Yanis Varoufakis: Risk has not been diminished, just taken out of sight[image error]
Ten years after its near-death experience, capitalism is back to its old ways.
Bailouts for the few and austerity for the many have caused global debt to rise 40% since 2007. Yes, British and European banks have contracted (as US authorities required Barclays, Deutsche Bank etc to shrink their dollar business) and tougher national rules constrain balance sheets.
However, this has causedfinancial intermediation to shift from banks to capital markets. By making some banks safer, the risk has been moved to the shadow banking system, which has grown from $28tn in 2010 to $45tn in 2018, and from the west to emerging markets, which have borrowed $3.7tn in the last decade – with the results we now see in Turkey and Argentina. In short, risk has not been diminished, just taken out of sight and dispersed geographically. Moreover, toxic politics has ensured that the two states that saved capitalism in 2008, the US and China, cannot repeat that double act.
What should be done? First, we need a global green investment programme to put the global glut of idle savings to useful purpose. A multilateral partnership of public investment banks could issue bonds in a coordinated fashion, which their respective central banks would support in the secondary markets. In this manner, global savings would be energised into major investments in jobs, the regions, health and education projects, and the green technologies that humanity needs.
Second, trade agreements must commit governments of poorer countries to minimum living wages for their workers. Third, we need a new Bretton Woods agreement to rebalance trade, re-couple trade and capital flows, put the financial genie back in the bottle, and create an international wealth fund to alleviate poverty and support marginalised communities across the world.
• Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece.
Ann Pettifor: To prevent another crisis, bring back Keynes
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The lessons have not been learned. The crisis manifested itself as a way of consolidating the existing global financial order. Business is better than usual for bankers now, largely backed by government guarantees and central bank largesse. There was some tinkering at the margins of the traditional banking system. Banks were told by regulators to hold more capital against their risk-taking. But very little was done to curb risk-taking, or to regulate the newly expansive shadow banking system.
Now, backed by the world’s most powerful governments and central banks, globalised private financial institutions are too big to fail and their bosses too big to jail.
So, no, the world is not safe.
To make the world safe will require democratically elected governments to take responsibility for managing the now globalised financial system, instead of leaving management of that system to invisible, self-regulating and self-interested players in global capital markets. Of greatest importance is the management of cross-border capital flows, the exchange rate, credit creation and the rate of interest applied across the spectrum of loans.
Until democratically accountable regulators manage cross-border flows, it will not be possible to tax global corporations that operate beyond the remit of regulatory democracy. Until central banks manage exchange rates, volatility and financial and trade imbalances will continue to plague governments. Until credit creation is managed and directed at productive, not speculative activity – then expect unpayable levels of debt to inflate. Unless central banks take responsibility for management of the rate of interest across the spectrum of lending, expect entrepreneurs to find borrowing for productive, long-term investment unaffordable.
Keynes taught these lessons after the Great Depression. To prevent another crisis, bring bank the monetary theory and policies of Keynes.
• Ann Pettifor is director of Prime: Policy Research in Macroeconomics and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation
Mark Littlewood: Regulators are refighting the last war, not planning for the next
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Politicians and regulators seem to have learned two lessons from the crash: that the cause was an unregulated financial services market; and that we should be trying to make banks safe from as much risk as humanly possible. This seems to drive them towards a worldview that, instead of a vibrant and competitive financial services sector, we should be trying to preserve the current system in aspic.
First, the idea that the financial services sector was some sort of unregulated wild west prior to 2008 is derisory. Even during the Thatcher years financial regulation was constantly being toughened, and becoming more complex. Since the crash, this has gotten worse, with an estimated 50,000 new regulations added across the G20, and the EU’s MiFID II regulations alone adding 1.5m paragraphs. The idea that even large firms or regulators can understand every element of these new regulations is laughable.
But more than the scale of the regulation is the way that it is targeted. Regulators have been spending most of their time dealing with higher bank capital requirements, but not looking at how the overall financial services sector could be protected from the failure of individual banks.
There will never be a time when businesses do not fail. It is the essence of capitalism, and without it a market system cannot operate. In their efforts to create a “safe” banking system, regulators (like generals) are focusing on refighting the last war rather than planning for the next. One day there will be another bank failure. Instead of worrying about how we can make banks safer, policymakers need to be putting in place a regulatory environment that means that when these inevitable bank failures occur, they can fail safely. The shareholders and employees of the bank should feel the consequences. A single bank failure should never be a systemic risk.
• Mark Littlewood is director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs
David Blanchflower: Central bankers’ credibility is shot
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Ten years ago Lehman Brothers failed and everything went downhill from there. But the event was a symptom, not the cause. When I was on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC), I started voting for rate cuts in October 2007 when bank rate was 5.75% as the signs of financial collapse were all around. The failure of Lehman wasn’t exactly a surprise given the prior collapses of Bear Stearns, Countrywide and Northern Rock. Banks that depended on wholesale money markets for cash had been in trouble for a while.
We now know that the US had been in recession since December 2007 and the UK and most European countries since the spring of 2008. Central bankers were caught flat-footed as they were focused on inflation which was high because of a spike in oil prices. That turned out to be a major error. It remains unclear whether or not economic forecasters will spot the next downturn before the event. Central banks have been forecasting a pickup in wage inflation and productivity every month since 2008, which hasn’t happened. Their belief in reversion to the pre-recession mean has been laughable. Their credibility is shot.
By the spring of 2008, US consumer and business confidence had collapsed – as had real consumption and retail. House prices and activity including housing starts and permits to build had tumbled. The UK had seen exactly the same with a lag of a few months.
Concerns were expressed in 2008 that there was a wage explosion coming, but there wasn’t. Mark Carney and the current MPC keep telling us that a wage explosion is upon us – but real wages haven’t risen for the last two years. Same old same old. Real wages in the UK are 6% below their September 2008 levels.
Banks are in better shape, but policymakers have few weapons to deal with the next crisis. Negative rates and lots of quantitative easing are on the horizon. Fiscal policy may not come to the rescue given the politics. The downside risks to growth seem huge from both Brexit and a possible trade war. In short, not much has been learned in a decade. Oh dear.
• David Blanchflower was an external member of the monetary policy committee at the Bank of England from June 2006 to May 2009
Olli Rehn: Debt makes the global economy vulnerable to future shocks
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The recent dangerous trends of populism and protectionism have their breeding ground in the global financial crisis. This is why we need to identify the right lessons from the crisis, and act accordingly. This work is far from complete.
From my experience in the eurozone financial fire brigade, the foremost lesson is just how vital financial stability is for the whole macroeconomy, including growth and employment. This fact was neglected before the crisis. As a result, we Europeans paid a bitter price in the form of a double-dip recession – and a huge number of people have endured years of unemployment. The difficulties were amplified by the two-way doom loop between the creditworthiness of banks and sovereigns.
To counter this, the banking union was launched in 2012. Since then, significant progress has been made by creating euro-area bodies for bank supervision and resolution. Euro-area banks are now more resilient as their capital buffers have been doubled from the pre-crisis 8% to today’s 16%. Public finances of the member states have also been much improved.
In the euro area, the key priority now should be completing the banking union with common deposit insurance and strengthening the Europeanstability mechanism. At the same time, the US and the UK should protect their regulatory achievements. It would be a big mistake to roll back what was achieved in the post-crisis years.
There is much talk about “normalisation”, especially in monetary policy. But the word itself is misleading as it suggests a return to some past state of affairs. I would prefer to talk about a journey towards a new equilibrium, which should be more sustainable, equitable and resilient than the old one.
On that journey, a key worry at the global level is the now apparent dependence of growth on the accumulation of even more debt. Debt accumulation makes the global economy and all of its parts increasingly vulnerable to any future shock. This suggests that the rebalancing of the world economy is far from complete, a necessary condition for sustainable growth and better employment, the ultimate goals of economic policy.
• Olli Rehn was European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs and the euro from 2009 to 2014
Nicky Morgan: The toxic culture of the banking industry must change
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Since the financial crisis 10 years ago, the banking sector has become significantly better capitalised, and the largest players are much less dependent on one another for funding. Yet in many ways, this still-concentrated sector looks remarkably similar to the one that threatened to bring the global economy to its knees.
One of the roles of the Treasury committee is to look under the bonnet of the financial services sector to shine a light on any of its shortcomings. The committee concluded in 2009 that the bonus culture was partly to blame for the banking crisis. The toxic culture that existed in certain corners of the industry was exposed very vividly by the crisis. Public trust in banking duly waned.
The changes introduced in the aftermath of the crisis, including those targeting remuneration and incentives, represent a step in the right direction. The senior managers and certification regime, too, should ensure that those guilty of misconduct are held personally accountable.
Ultimately it is for the general public themselves to decide whether the industry and policymakers have done enough to restore trust in financial services, but memories of the recklessness that precipitated the crash will not fade overnight.
While reductions in bonuses can be quantified, changes to other aspects of culture are more difficult to measure. In our report on women in the finance industry, the Treasury committee concluded that an alpha-male culture is still prevalent in finance, and that it remains a deterrent for women seeking to progress in the sector.
The benefits of greater diversity include better financial performance and reduced groupthink, with the latter flagged by many as a key contributor to the crisis of a decade ago.
Policymakers have been busy over the last 10 years: now the industry itself must prove that things have changed. Until the public is confident that the sector’s cultural flaws have been rectified, trust in banking will remain low.
• Nicky Morgan is the Conservative MP for Loughborough and chair of the Commons Treasury committee
Micah White: The collapse was a social crisis – and unlike the economic crisis, it has never stopped
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Implicit in the question of whether the world has learned the lesson from the collapse of Lehman Brothers is the sense that the economic crisis of 2008 was punishment for a collective misdeed. The underlying logic is that the crisis was avoidable and, moreover, should have been avoided. That it happened is treated as retribution, evidence of our societal wrongdoing and a global wake-up call to change our behaviour.
But 10 years later, when we seek to identify exactly what that wrongdoing was, so that we may judge if we have appropriately changed, there seems to be no clear consensus. Or rather the answers that are given are entirely unsatisfying.
The solution to this dangerous ignorance is not as simple as continuing to question economists, policymakers or corporate CEOs. I wish it were. I respect their expertise. This is not a kneejerk rejection of educated elites. Instead, although the collapse of Lehman Brothers was ostensibly part of an economic crisis, I believe that the real cause is elsewhere.
Beyond being an economic crisis, the collapse of 2008 was a social crisis. It was a great revealing of the deeply immoral financial arrangement of our societies, the criminal ineptitude of our regulators, the disastrous corruption of our democracies by money. What broke in 2008 wasn’t primarily the economy: it was the people’s faith in the reigning world order. The economy has been fixed somewhat but this faith has not been restored.
This social crisis, unlike the economic crisis, never stopped – everything we’re experiencing on the global political stage today, from the rise of social movements beginning with Occupy Wall Street to the clamorous appearance of ethno-nationalist populism, is a symptom of the unresolved social crisis of 2008.
What remains to be done is obviously a revolution that transforms global governance. Both left and right increasingly agree about that. So I suppose from that perspective, yes, the world has learned the most important lesson from 2008.
• Micah White is co-creator of Occupy Wall Street and author of The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution
Μια άλλη ΔΕΘ – το προεκλογικό πρόγραμμα του ΜέΡΑ25 που παρουσιάστηκε στην ΔΕΘ
Τέτοια εποχή πριν από τέσσερα χρόνια δημοσίευσα άρθρο με τίτλο «Μια άλλη ΔΕΘ», με το οποίο ασκούσα κριτική στο Πρόγραμμα Θεσσαλονίκης του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, λέγοντας:
«Πόσο θα ήθελα μια τοποθέτηση που να λέει πάνω-κάτω τα εξής: Αν πιστεύετε ότι τα Μνημόνια… ήταν η μόνη εναλλακτική εντός της ευρωζώνης, δεν πρέπει να μας ψηφίσετε. Αν κρίνετε ότι το… Μνημόνιο τελειώνει επί της ουσίας… με τον ελληνικό λαό να αποκτά ξανά τη δυνατότητα να πάρει τις τύχες του στα χέρια του…μέσω της εκκολαπτόμενης επιμήκυνσης, παρακαλούμε ψηφίστε τη Συγκυβέρνηση – όχι εμάς… Γιατί να μας ψηφίσετε; Επειδή σας υποσχόμαστε μόνο δύο πράγματα: Αίμα και Δάκρυα, όπως υποσχέθηκε στους συμπολίτες του ο Τσόρτσιλ το 1939…».
Την περασμένη Πέμπτη, στη ΔΕΘ, μου δόθηκε η ευκαιρία, ως γραμματέας του ΜέΡΑ25, χωρίς τα βαρίδια της δημαγωγίας και του παλαιοκομματισμού, να καταθέσω το Πρόγραμμα Θεσσαλονίκης που θα ήθελα να έχει κατατεθεί το 2014, επικαιροποιημένο με τρόπο που λαμβάνει υπόψη τη συνθηκολόγηση του κ. Τσίπρα το 2015 και τη συμβατική επέκταση της Χρεοδουλοπαροικίας μας έως το 2060.
Οπως και το 2014, έτσι και σήμερα οι πολίτες γνωρίζουν ότι η πορεία της χώρας είναι αδιέξοδη. Ομως, σήμερα, το Μνημονιακό Τόξο περιλαμβάνει και τον ΣΥΡΙΖΑ και, έτσι, κατάφερε να πείσει πολλούς ότι δεν υπάρχει εναλλακτική σε αυτή την πορεία που γονατίζει την Ελλάδα. Τίποτα όμως δεν απειλεί περισσότερο τη δημοκρατία, τη χώρα, από αυτή την αίσθηση παραίτησης και ανημποριάς.
Το μόνο αντίδοτο στην αποδοχή της συστηματικής Ερημοποίησης της Ελλάδας, με χιλιάδες νέες και νέους να ρίχνουν μαύρη πέτρα πίσω τους κάθε μήνα, είναι οι ρεαλιστικές, υπεύθυνες, συγκεκριμένες, ριζοσπαστικές προτάσεις για το τι πρέπει και μπορεί να γίνει τη «Δευτέρα το πρωί».
Τέτοιες προτάσεις καταθέτει τώρα το ΜέΡΑ25 σε κάθε τομέα, αγνοώντας το πολιτικό κόστος και με έμφαση σε καινοτόμες πολιτικές που, όλες μαζί, συνθέτουν ένα οργανικό, προγραμματικό σύνολο.
Μέρες μετά την ίδρυση του ΜέΡΑ25, ξεκίνησε ο εσωτερικός διάλογος για το Πρόγραμμα. Η Πολιτική Γραμματεία κατέθεσε βασικές αρχές και ιδέες, τα μέλη μας συνεισέφεραν τις δικές τους ιδέες και, τον Ιούλιο-Αύγουστο, γράφτηκε το Σχέδιο Πολιτικού Προγράμματος το οποίο αυτή την εβδομάδα ολοκληρώνεται μέσω καθολικής ηλεκτρονικής ψηφοφορίας, τόσο ως προς το συνολικό πρόγραμμα όσο και ως προς τα μέρη του.
Αυτό όμως που ξεχωρίζει και καθιστά το ΜέΡΑ25 μοναδικό κόμμα είναι το γεγονός ότι όταν αναφέρθηκα στα μέλη μας, δεν εννοούσα μόνο τα μέλη μας στην Ελλάδα, αλλά και τα 100 χιλιάδες μέλη μας σε όλη την Ευρώπη. Νιώθουμε περηφάνια για τις εσωτερικές μας δημοκρατικές διαδικασίες – το γεγονός ότι αποφασίζουμε ΟΛΟΙ ΜΑΖΙ, Ελληνες, Γερμανοί, Βρετανοί, Γάλλοι κ.λπ., για το εκλογικό μας πρόγραμμα και τις θέσεις μας για την Ελλάδα – όπως θα κάνουμε για τη Γερμανία, για τη Γαλλία, για κάθε χώρα της Ευρώπης.
Τα τρία βασικά χαρακτηριστικά του Εκλογικού Προγράμματος του ΜέΡΑ25 που το διαφοροποιούν από προεκλογικές προτάσεις άλλων κομμάτων είναι:
1. Η διαφοροποίηση από την τακτική του Μνημονιακού Τόξου να υπόσχεται πράγματα (π.χ. ριζική μείωση φορολογικών συντελεστών και ουσιαστική στήριξη των αδύναμων πολιτών) που, για να υλοποιηθούν, απαιτούν τη ρήξη με τους δανειστές την οποία το Μνημονιακό Τόξο δεν διανοείται καν να κάνει, και μάλιστα τη δαιμονοποιεί.
2. Η θέση μας πως η ρήξη με τους δανειστές δεν είναι μόνο αναγκαία για να επιστρέψει η προοπτική στην Ελλάδα, αλλά πως είναι κι ο μόνος τρόπος να είμαστε υπεύθυνα ευρωπαϊστές.
3. Το σχέδιό μας για την επιστροφή στα χέρια των πολιτών των αποφάσεων για την παιδεία, για τον πολιτισμό, για σημαντικά τοπικά και περιφερειακά ζητήματα κ.λπ. μέσω μόνιμων Διαβουλευτικών Συνελεύσεων Κληρωτών & Εκλεγμένων Πολιτών (ΔΙΑΣΚΕΠ).
Η κρατική πολιτική για την Παιδεία, τα ΜΜΕ κ.λπ. αποτυγχάνει επειδή τα υπουργεία υφαρπάζονται από τα συμφέροντα της ολιγαρχίας, των συντεχνιών, του κομματισμού. Γι’ αυτό το ΜέΡΑ25 θεσμοθετεί την εκχώρηση της λήψης αποφάσεων στην κοινωνία μέσω ενός νέου θεσμού: των Διαβουλευτικών Συμβουλίων Κληρωτών & Εκλεγμένων Πολιτών (ΔΙΑΣΚΕΠ).
Π.χ. το ΜέΡΑ25 θεωρεί ότι καμία κυβέρνηση δεν μπορεί να φέρει τη μορφωτική επανάσταση που απαιτείται. Για να εξασφαλιστεί η ακηδεμόνευτη, ακομμάτιστη, συνεχής μορφωτική μεταρρύθμιση, ιδρύεται το ΔΙΑΣΚΕΠ ΜΟΡΦΩΣΗΣ & ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΣΗΣ, αποτελούμενο από 300 μέλη: 100 με κλήρωση από τους ενεργούς εκπαιδευτικούς (10 νηπιαγωγοί, 30 Δημοτικών, 30 Γυμνασίων/Λυκείων, 30 πανεπιστημιακοί), 100 με κλήρωση από τον συνολικό πληθυσμό της χώρας (όλοι με κυλιόμενες διετείς θητείες), ενώ ο υπόλοιποι 100 θα ορίζονται από τα κοινοβουλευτικά κόμματα. Εντολή του νέου συμμετοχικού θεσμού, η χάραξη της πολιτικής για την Παιδεία.
Αντίστοιχοι θεσμοί θα εκδημοκρατίσουν και θα αναβαθμίσουν τις πολιτικές για τον Πολιτισμό, τα ΜΜΕ, την Τοπική & Περιφερειακή Αυτοδιοίκηση. Παράλληλα, νέοι συμμετοχικοί θεσμοί θα επιλέγουν τους ανώτατους δικαστές, θα ελέγχουν τα ΑΕΙ, θα προετοιμάζουν συνταγματικές αναθεωρήσεις κ.λπ., ενώ θα καταργηθεί η βουλευτική ασυλία και θα ιδρυθεί Σώμα Δίωξης Πολιτικού & Μεγαλοεπιχειρηματικού Εγκλήματος.
Ξήλωμα της Χρεοδουλοπαροικίας
Οι τομές που θα νομοθετήσει το ΜέΡΑ25 αποτελούν τις αναγκαίες συνθήκες για την ανάκαμψη και τον τερματισμό της Χρεοδουλοπαροικίας. Ενδεικτικά αναφέρω μερικές μόνο: Μέγιστος ΦΠΑ και φορολογικός συντελεστής μικρομεσαίων επιχειρήσεων στο 18%. Πλαφόν 50% επί των κερδών σε συνολικές εισφορές & φόρους μικρομεσαίων επιχειρήσεων. Κατάργηση προπληρωμής φόρων. Μορατόριουμ όλων των ασφαλιστικών εισφορών και φόρων για startups.
Φόρος 0,2% επί των χρεών των τραπεζών για την ενίσχυση των συντάξεων. Ιδρυση Δημόσιου Εξωτραπεζικού Συστήματος Πληρωμών (ΔΕΣΠ) και διάθεση Ελάχιστου Εγγυημένου Εισοδήματος 400 ευρώ μηνιαίως σε κάθε οικογένεια μέσω του ΔΕΣΠ. Ιδρυση Δημόσιας Εταιρείας Διαχείρισης Ιδιωτικών Χρεών («κόκκινων δανείων»). Νέος όρος για την Golden Visa: 10 νέες θέσεις εργασίας πλήρους απασχόλησης κ.ο.κ.
Το 2015 δεν θα επαναληφθεί! Το Πρόγραμμα του ΜέΡΑ25 θα νομοθετηθεί χωρίς καμία πρότερη συνεννόηση με τους δανειστές. «Μα, αν γίνει αυτό, δεν θα μας διώξουν από το ευρώ;» ρωτούν οι υποταγμένοι στον Μνημονιακό Παραλογισμό.
Απαντάμε ευθαρσώς: Δεν πιστεύουμε ότι θα τολμήσουν ένα Grexit (την ώρα που η Ιταλία καταρρέει) επειδή εμείς νομοθετούμε τα αυτονόητα που έπρεπε να νομοθετηθούν είτε με ευρώ είτε με δραχμή. Αλλά και να το κάνουν, θεωρούμε χείριστη εξέλιξη τη συνέχιση της σημερινής σκοτοδίνης στο πλαίσιο του 4ου Σιωπηλού Μνημονίου – την αέναη αναπαραγωγή της Χρεοδουλοπαροικίας και την Ερημοποίηση της χώρας εντός του ευρώ.
Για εμάς στο ΜέΡΑ25, ούτε το ευρώ ούτε η δραχμή είναι φετίχ. Η Ελληνική Δημοκρατία και ο τερματισμός της Ερημοποίησης της Πατρίδας είναι!
*γραμματέας ΜέΡΑ25
Για την αρχική δημοσίευση στην ΕφΣυν πατήστε εδώ.
September 14, 2018
Our Progressive International movement will fight, at once, two authoritarianisms: The National International and the Financialised Globalists who paved the ground for them – Yanis Varoufakis & Bernie Sanders in THE GUARDIAN (13th September 2018)
Our era will be remembered for the triumphant march of a globally unifying rightwing – a Nationalist International – that sprang out of the cesspool of financialised capitalism. Whether it will also be remembered for a successful humanist challenge to this menace depends on the willingness of progressives in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom as well as countries like Mexico, India and South Africa, to forge a coherent Progressive International.
Our task is not unprecedented. Fascists did not come to power in the mid-war period by promising violence, war or concentration camps. They came to power by addressing good people who, following a severe capitalist crisis, had been treated for too long like livestock that had lost its market value. Instead of treating them like “deplorables”, fascists looked at them in the eye and promised to restore their pride, offered their friendship, gave them a sense that they belonged to a larger ideal, allowed them to think of themselves as something more than sovereign consumers.
That injection of self-esteem was accompanied by warnings against the lurking “alien” who threatened their revived hope. The politics of “us versus them” took over, bleached of social class characteristics and defined solely in terms of identities. The fear of losing status turned into tolerance of human rights abuses first against the suspect “others” and then against any and all dissent. Soon, as the establishment’s control over politics waned under the weight of the economic crisis it had caused, the progressives ended up marginalised or in prison. By then it was all over.Is this not how Donald Trump first conquered the White House and is now winning the discursive war against a Democratic party establishment? Is this not reminiscent of the Conservative Brexiteers’ sudden appreciation of a National Health Service they had starved of funds for decades, or the energetic embracing of democracy that Thatcherism had subordinated to the logic of market forces? Are these not the ways of the hard right governments in Austria, Hungary and Poland, of Greece’s Golden Dawn Nazis and, most poignantly, of Matteo Salvini, the strongman steering the new Italian government? Everywhere we look today we see manifestations of the resurgence of an ambitious Nationalist International, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s. As for the establishment, they are behaving as if with a penchant to repeat the Weimar Republic’s every mistake.
But enough of the diagnosis. The pertinent question now is: what must we do? A tactical alliance with the globalist establishment is out of the question. Tony Blair, Hilary Clinton, the social democratic establishment in continental Europe are too compromised by their monetary links to a degenerating financialised capitalism and its accompanying ideology. For decades they relied on free market populism: the false promise that everyone can become better off as long as we submit to commodification. They’d like us to believe in a never-ending escalator that will take us to the heights of consumer satisfaction, but it doesn’t exist.
Our generation’s 1929, which occurred in 2008, shattered this illusion. The establishment continued as if it were possible to mend things via a combination of austerity for the many, socialism for the very few and authoritarianism all around. All the while, the Nationalist International has been riding to victory, fueled by growing discontent. To counter this power, progressives must specify very precisely the causes and nature of the people’s unrest and unhappiness: namely, the global oligarchy’s intense class war against the burgeoning precariat, against what is left of the western proletariat and, generally, against weaker citizens.
Next, we need to demonstrate that the only way the many can regain control of our lives, our communities, our cities and our countries is by coordinating our struggles along the axis of an Internationalist New Deal. While globalised financial capital can no longer be allowed to tear our societies into shreds, we must explain that no country is an island. Just like climate change demands of us both local and international action, so too does the fight against poverty, private debt and rogue bankers. To illustrate that tariffs are not the best way of protecting our workers, since they mostly enrich local oligarchies, we must campaign for trade agreements that commit governments of poorer countries to legislating minimum living wages for their workers and guaranteed jobs locally. That way communities can be revived in richer and poorer countries at once.
Even more ambitiously, our Progressive International must propose an International Monetary Clearing Union, of the type John Maynard Keynes suggested during the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, including well-designed restrictions on capital movements. By rebalancing wages, trade and finance at a global scale, both involuntary migration and involuntary unemployment will recede, thus ending the moral panic over the human right to move freely about the world.
And who is going to piece together this desperately needed Progressive International? Happily, there is no shortage of potential initiators: Bernie Sanders’s “political revolution” in the US, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, our Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25), Mexico’s president-elect, the progressive elements of the African National Congress, the various movements fighting against bigotry and austerity in India.
Let us begin today. More will follow us the moment when hatred and anger yield to rational hope.
Yanis Varoufakis is the former Greek finance minister and co-founder of DiEM25 whose New Deal for Europe will be put to European voters in the May 2019 European Parliament elections
Bernie Sanders’ reply to Yanis Varoufakis
Yanis Varoufakis is exactly right. At a time of massive global wealth and income inequality, oligarchy, rising authoritarianism and militarism, we need a Progressive International movement to counter these threats. It is not acceptable that the top 1% of the world’s population owns more wealth than the bottom 99%, that multinational corporations and the wealthy stash over $21tn in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, and that the fossil fuel industry continues to destroy the planet because countries are unable to cooperate effectively to combat climate change.
While the very rich get much richer, people all over the globe are working longer hours for stagnating wages, and fear for their children’s future. Authoritarians exploit these economic anxieties, creating scapegoats which pit one group against another.
The solution, as Varoufakis points out, is an international progressive agenda that brings working people together around a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people. The fate of the world is at stake. Let us go forward together now!
BERNIE SANDERS: A new authoritarian axis demands an international progressive front (Click here for The Guardian)
There is a global struggle taking place of enormous consequence. Nothing less than the future of the planet – economically, socially and environmentally – is at stake.
At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the world’s top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 99%, we are seeing the rise of a new authoritarian axis.
While these regimes may differ in some respects, they share key attributes: hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and a belief that government should benefit their own selfish financial interests. These leaders are also deeply connected to a network of multi-billionaire oligarchs who see the world as their economic plaything.
Those of us who believe in democracy, who believe that a government must be accountable to its people, must understand the scope of this challenge if we are to effectively confront it.
It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States. All around the world, in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to power.
This trend certainly did not begin with Trump, but there’s no question that authoritarian leaders around the world have drawn inspiration from the fact that the leader of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy seems to delight in shattering democratic norms.
Three years ago, who would have imagined that the United States would stay neutral between Canada, our democratic neighbor and second largest trading partner, and Saudi Arabia, a monarchic, client state that treats women as third-class citizens? It’s also hard to imagine that Israel’s Netanyahu government would have moved to pass the recent “nation state law”, which essentially codifies the second-class status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, if Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t know Trump would have his back.
All of this is not exactly a secret. As the US continues to grow further and further apart from our longtime democratic allies, the US ambassador to Germany recently made clear the Trump administration’s support for rightwing extremist parties across Europe.
In addition to Trump’s hostility toward democratic institutions we have a billionaire president who, in an unprecedented way, has blatantly embedded his own economic interests and those of his cronies into the policies of government.
Other authoritarian states are much farther along this kleptocratic process. In Russia, it is impossible to tell where the decisions of government end and the interests of Vladimir Putin and his circle of oligarchs begin. They operate as one unit. Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, there is no debate about separation because the natural resources of the state, valued at trillions of dollars, belong to the Saudi royal family. In Hungary, far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán is openly allied with Putin in Russia. In China, an inner circle led by Xi Jinping has steadily consolidated power, clamping down on domestic political freedom while it aggressively promotes a version of authoritarian capitalism abroad.
We must understand that these authoritarians are part of a common front. They are in close contact with each other, share tactics and, as in the case of European and American rightwing movements, even share some of the same funders. The Mercer family, for example, supporters of the infamous Cambridge Analytica, have been key backers of Trump and of Breitbart News, which operates in Europe, the United States and Israel to advance the same anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda. Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson gives generously to rightwing causes in both the United States and Israel, promoting a shared agenda of intolerance and illiberalism in both countries.
The truth is, however, that to effectively oppose rightwing authoritarianism, we cannot simply go back to the failed status quo of the last several decades. Today in the United States, and in many other parts of the world, people are working longer hours for stagnating wages, and worry that their children will have a lower standard of living than they do.
Our job is to fight for a future in which new technology and innovation works to benefit all people, not just a few. It is not acceptable that the top 1% of the world’s population owns half the planet’s wealth, while the bottom 70% of the working age population accounts for just 2.7% of global wealth.
Together governments of the world must come together to end the absurdity of the rich and multinational corporations stashing over $21tn in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and then demanding that their respective governments impose an austerity agenda on their working families.
It is not acceptable that the fossil fuel industry continues to make huge profits while their carbon emissions destroy the planet for our children and grandchildren.
It is not acceptable that a handful of multinational media giants, owned by a small number of billionaires, largely control the flow of information on the planet.
It is not acceptable that trade policies that benefit large multinational corporations and encourage a race to the bottom hurt working people throughout the world as they are written out of public view.
It is not acceptable that, with the cold war long behind us, countries around the world spend over $1tn a year on weapons of destruction, while millions of children die of easily treatable diseases.
In order to effectively combat the rise of the international authoritarian axis, we need an international progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people, and that addresses the massive global inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power.
Such a movement must be willing to think creatively and boldly about the world that we would like to see. While the authoritarian axis is committed to tearing down a post-second world war global order that they see as limiting their access to power and wealth, it is not enough for us to simply defend that order as it exists now.
We must look honestly at how that order has failed to deliver on many of its promises, and how authoritarians have adeptly exploited those failures in order to build support for their agenda. We must take the opportunity to reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity, an order that recognizes that every person on this planet shares a common humanity, that we all want our children to grow up healthy, to have a good education, have decent jobs, drink clean water, breathe clean air and live in peace.
Our job is to reach out to those in every corner of the world who share these values, and who are fighting for a better world.
In a time of exploding wealth and technology, we have the potential to create a decent life for all people. Our job is to build on our common humanity and do everything that we can to oppose all of the forces, whether unaccountable government power or unaccountable corporate power, who try to divide us up and set us against each other. We know that those forces work together across borders. We must do the same.
Bernie Sanders is a US Senator from Vermont.
Yanis Varoufakis’ reply to Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders is spot-on. Financiers have long formed an international “brotherhood” to guarantee themselves international bailouts when their paper pyramids crash.
More recently, xenophobic rightwing zealots also formed their very own Nationalist International, turning once proud people against another so that they control their wealth and politics.
It is high time that Democrats from across the world form a Progressive International in the interests of a majority of people on every continent, in every country.
Sanders is also right when he says that the solution is not to go back to a status quo whose spectacular failure has paved the ground for the rise of the Nationalist International.
Our Progressive International must lead with a vision of the green, shared prosperity that human ingenuity is capable of providing – as long as democracy is given a chance to enable it.
To that end we need to do more than campaign together. Let us form a common council that draws out a common blueprint for an International New Deal, a progressive New Bretton Woods.
September 12, 2018
Lessons from 2008 for beyond 2018: Keynote this Friday 14th September at the OECD, Paris
These imbalances were essential after the 1971 collapse of the Bretton Woods system because, once the United States was in deficit to the rest of the world, but nonetheless issued the world’s main currency, the only alternative to imposing austerity upon itself (and shrinking like… Greece) was to boost its trade deficit (providing in the process China’s, Japan’s and, later, China’s factories with the necessary demand) and make non-American capitalists pay for the US trade deficit (by enticing their capital to Wall Street lured by marvellous financial returns). But for that to happen, Wall Street and the City had to be ‘unleashed’. This ‘unleashing’ required a political class willing to de-regulate and an economics profession keen to provide the academic ‘sermons’ that would steady the de-regulating politicians’ hand (and nerve). Once financiers were unshackled from all meaningful regulation, a glut of private, combustible quasi-money changed the nature of capitalism.
In Europe, the demise of the Bretton Woods system caused large fluctuations in exchange rates that undermined a European Union forged initially as a cartel of central European oligopolies that needed stable prices and thus fixed exchange rates. This gave the impetus to the creation of a common currency (the euro) in a manner guaranteeing that it could never absorb the shockwaves of the inevitable global financial crisis. The notion of a central bank without a state to back it up, and of nineteen governments without a central bank to bail them or the national banks out, could only proceed on the erroneous assumption that the miracle of financialisation would never burst. When it did burst, European democracy was seriously wounded while Europe’s fiscal and monetary policy responses destabilised the faltering global economy through vicious two-way dynamic effects.
In the end, following the 2008 financial collapse, two powers saved financialised capitalism from itself: The US government, and in particular the trillions of dollars that the Federal Reserve pumped into European private and central banks via its ‘swap lines’. And China, whose skilful economic management boosted domestic investment to unheard of levels, kept on its books worthless dollar assets that many others were shedding, and even went so far as to propose the elimination of trade imbalances via the adoption of a multilateral clearing union of the type that John Maynard Keynes had proposed at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 (only to be denied by the Obama administration, who preferred to keep the dollar’s privilege intact at the expense of a seriously unstable capitalism).
Now, in 2018, we must face up to three uncomfortable facts: First, the neoliberal populist myth (that wholesale deregulation will make everyone’s dreams come true under the rule of democracy and… Montesquieu) has been discredited. Secondly, the pre-2008 global imbalances are rearing their ugly head as if the events of 2008 taught us nothing. And thirdly that, in the political climate that naturally flowed from the inane handling of an inevitable crisis, it is highly unlikely China and the US could, or would be willing to, combine forces to save capitalism again.
Finally, the keynote will end with a sketch of a New Bretton Woods that our times are calling for.
14 September – OECD NAEC and Partners for a New Economy (P4NE) Conference
Day 2 will bring together some of the leading actors in the crisis to debate what caused the crisis; its economic, social and political impacts; and how the financial system has changed, or should change. The state of economics after the crisis will also be discussed. While economic growth has recovered, there remain vulnerabilities and risks, and therefore, economists and policy makers need to improve the way we understand the functioning and purpose of the economy.
9:30-10:00
Opening by Angel Gurria , Secretary General of the OECD
Session 1: The Failure of Lehman Brothers and the causes of the financial crisis
10:00-11:30
The 2008 crisis was caused by a failure to run and to regulate competently the global economy and the firms that dominate it. This allowed huge imbalances to build up, and, when they reached a tipping point where they could no longer sustain their own weight, failure was sudden and brutal. The crisis revealed how some of the very strengths that had allowed the economy to expand, such as interconnectedness in its many guises, could be just as potent in provoking or aggravating its downfall. In this panel, key players in the crisis will draw lessons from what was happening in the financial system and how their instituions reacted.
Chair: John Kay, Financial Times
Keynote address: Jean-Claude Trichet, Former President of the European Central Bank
Panelists:
Irena Sodin , Ambassador to the OECD, Permanent Representative of Slovenia
John Llewellyn , Former Chief Global Economist, Lehman Brothers
Greg Medcraft , Director of OECD Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs
Session 2: The financial system 10 years on
11:45-13:00
The crisis showed that banks and financial market are not simply intermediaries between economic agents like companies and investors, and that they have an impact on the real economy in their own right. This prompts questions about whether finance and investment can be used to drive job creation and income growth and act as a conduit for the global diffusion of innovation, expertise and the funding all these depend on. This panel will also discuss whether regulators and other actors have applied the lessons of the last crisis and whether the system is now more resilient.
Chair: John Kay, Financial Times
Keynote Address: Willem Buiter, Special Economic Adviser, Citi
Panelists:
Steve Keen , Professor of Economics and author of Can we Avoid Another Financial Crisis?
Mathilde Mesnard , Deputy Director, Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs
Erdem Basci , Ambassador, Permanent Delegation of Turkey to the OECD
Keynote speech: “Lessons from 2008 for beyond 2018”
14:00-14:45
Yanis Varoufakis , Economist and former Greek Minister of Finance
Introduction by Sony Kapoor, Managing Director, Re-Define
Session 3 : The social and political fallout of the crisis
14:45-16:15
The financial crisis showed that the benefits of economic growth do not trickle down automatically. The long period of expansion before 2008 was characterised by growing inequalities of income, wealth and opportunities. Our economic systems, with all their strengths and advantages, have been producing and perpetuating social disparity for decades, and inequality has widened since the crisis. This has fuelled the perception that those who caused the crisis were saved by govenments at the expense of those who suffered. Disscussion will centre on the causes of popular miscontent and what can be done to mend the damage to the social fabric and to encourage constructive political debate.
Chair: Gabriela Ramos, Chief of Staff and Sherpa
Panelists:
Michael Jacobs, Director, Commission on Economic Justice, Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)
Robert Skidelsky , Professor of Political Economy, University of Warwick
Erika Widegren , Chief Executive, Re-imagine-Europa
Session 4: Economics after the crisis
16:30-18:00
The dominant school of economic thought prior to the crisis essentially saw the economy as a machine that could be modelled and understood using general equilibrium models and representative agents behaving rationally to maximise value. This machine almost always operated at its optimal speed, producing outputs in an almost totally predictable, linear way, under the close control of its policy operators, unless it was hit by external shocks. Did the crisis discredit the analyses based on this view and the policy advice it generated?
Chair: Martine Durand, Chief Statistician and Director of Statistics and Data, OECD
Keynote Speaker: Maurice Obstfeld, Chief Economist of the IMF
Panelists:
Eric Beinhocker , Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), Oxford
Maeve Cohen , Director, Rethinking Economics
William White , Economist, former Chair of the Economic Development Review Committee (EDRC)
September 11, 2018
How should the Left approach Europe? Interviewed, along Manuel Bompard, by Jacobin (France)
Is Europe needed? If yes, for what to do?
Your question implies a dilemma: Either organise politically, and economically, at the level of the nation-state. Or operate transnationally across Europe. DiEM25 is convinced that this is a false dilemma based on a serious misunderstanding of contemporary capitalism.
Bankers do not make the mistake of agonising over such pseudo-dilemmas. They understand that to keep nation-states under their thumb they need to operate transnationally. Fascists too understand it. While calling for the restoration of the fenced nation-state, they like a Nationalist International. Only the Left still contains voices that are sincerely calling for a nation-state-based political project!
So, to answer your question directly: We need Europe because the tension between finance and political sovereignty reaches its climax at the transnational level. The financial elite trans-nationalises capital in liquid form to bring states to their knees. Thus, DiEM25’s position: To reclaim our cities, our regions and our countries we need to reclaim our Europe.
How is it possible to make the European citizen want Europe? What can be a federative (common) project?
Progressives in France never make the mistake of identifying France with the French state. Why then identify Europe with the European Union’s institutions? Europeans want Europe and, at once, loathe the European Union’ ridiculous policies and anti-democratic methods. They despise the fact that, while two-thirds of Europeans support banning pesticides and diesel cars from city centres, the EU is conspiring to authorise glyphosate and to turn a blind eye to diesel-gate.
So, our duty is to demonstrate to Europeans that it is perfectly possible (though, of course, not easy) to take over the institutions of the EU, re-align their policies and practices with their views of what Europe should be, and begin the debate at the grassroots level of what kind of democratic European Union we want.
What is, to your opinion, the first one measure, the urgent one measure, which can change the life of European citizens?
A Green Investment-led Recovery Program to the tune of 500 billion euros annually for five years financed through European Investment Bank bonds (with the European Central Bank ready to buy these bonds if their yields begins to rise). Also, a new European Green Works Agency to identify and manage the green transition projects (energy, transport, manufacturing and agriculture). This ‘measure’ will fund the green transition that future Europeans deserve while creating the good quality jobs that Europeans need today.
Is it really possible to change the orientation of the European Union and if yes, with whom? (What kind of alliances in Greece, in Italy, in Europe…?)
The EU’s orientation is changing all the time. Except that it is shifting in the direction of rancid racism and fragmentation craved by the Nationalist International. So, the question is: How can change be re-directed in a humanist, progressive direction? DiEM25 believes, especially after Syriza’s surrender in 2015, it is a mistake to aspire to alliances between countries (e.g. France, Greece) or between nationally constituted and run parties. The progressive re-orientation of European politics demands a new transnational political movement that DiEM25 has already illustrated. In DiEM25 we do not have separate French, German, Greek and Italian branches but are operating in every country as a single, unitary movement – deciding on our position regarding French pensions or Greek taxation as one. Recently, together with many other movements (e.g. Generations in France, Razem in Poland, Alternativet in Denmark), DiEM25 has established the EUROPEAN SPRING – our paneuropean electoral list, with a single manifesto and program, with which to contest the European Parliament elections next May.
As Europe is living a growing nationalism and far-right adhesion, what is the answer to bring? What kind of campaign is needed to fight them?
To defeat xenophobic nationalism, we must understand fully how self-defeating it is for the Left to fall into the trap of advocating closed borders. The moment we defend the “regaining control over our borders narrative” we become unwilling accomplices to those who build political careers out of scapegoating migrants.
What are the priorities for the European elections?
DiEM25 and the EUROPEAN SPRING electoral list that will compete in the European Parliament elections in May 2019 will seek European citizens’ vote across Europe on the basis of our comprehensive manifesto: A New Deal for Europe. Focusing on four major aims (Democratise Europe – Fight Poverty and Exploitation – Build Shared, Green Prosperity – Deepen International Solidarity), our program presents in great detail the institutional changes and policies that we propose. Anyone wishing to discuss our program is invited to come to our DiEM25 France stand at the Fête de l’Humanité in September.
What is the answer to the migration’s issue?
For one thousand years, Europe colonised, with its often aggressive migrants, the planet. Now the demographics have changed and it was inevitable that migration flows would be reversed. Our immediate duty is to organise safe routes for migrants that today either die en route to Europe, or are incarcerated along the way by brutal ‘entrepreneurs’, often subsidised by EU money. Additionally, we must design ambitious European-wide programs to integrate migrants in a manner that is advantageous to them as well as to our aging communities. And, of course, we must invest in fighting climate change and the neo-colonial wars that force people out of their homes.
REPRENDRE L’EUROPE Comment et où mener la bataille politique pour reconquérir la souveraineté populaire en Europe ?
Réponses croisées de Manuel Bompard et Yánis Varoufákis.
REGARDS: A-t-on besoin d’Europe ? Pour quoi faire ?
Manuel Bompard: L’Europe est une grande idée, mais les traités qui l’organisent sont une grande calamité. Là où la coopération européenne devrait permettre de lutter contre la catastrophe écologique, ce sont les lobbies du productivisme et du nucléaire qui règnent en maîtres à Bruxelles. Là où l’Europe devrait permettre l’harmonisation par le haut des droits humains, elle organise au contraire la mise en concurrence des peuples et le démantèlement des services publics. Nous avons donc surtout besoin de mettre un terme à l’Europe de la caste. Alors nous pourrons nouer les coopérations internationales indispensables par exemple pour faire face au désastre écologique ou pour lutter contre la fraude et l’évasion fiscale.
Yanis Varoufakis: Nous sommes face à un dilemme. Soit s’organiser politiquement et économiquement au niveau de l’État-nation ; soit agir de façon transnationale dans toute l’Europe. DiEM25 est convaincu que c’est un dilemme erroné, basé sur une mauvaise appréhension du capitalisme contemporain. Les banquiers, eux, ne s’embarrassent pas de ce pseudo-dilemme. Ils comprennent que pour garder les États-nations sous leur emprise, ils doivent opérer de façon transnationale. Les fascistes, eux aussi, l’ont bien compris. Alors qu’ils appellent à la restauration d’un État national clos, ils aspirent à une Internationale nationaliste. Il n’y a que la gauche qui continue d’avoir des voix qui appellent sincèrement à un projet politique basé sur l’Étatnation. Nous avons donc besoin d’Europe car la tension entre la finance et la souveraineté nationale atteint son apogée au niveau transnational. L’élite financière transnationalise le capital en une forme liquide afin de mettre les États à ses pieds. Et à DiEM25, nous considérons que pour reconquérir nos villes, nos régions et nos pays, nous devons reconquérir l’Europe.
REGARDS: Comment donner envie d’Europe aux Européens ? Quel projet fédérateur ?
Manuel Bompard: En cessant de faire tout pour qu’ils la détestent. Les peuples européens ne sont pas masochistes. L’Europe les attaque de toutes parts avec la complicité des oligarchies nationales. Il faut y mettre un terme. Nous proposons de sortir des traités existants en renégociant autour des points fondamentaux : fin de l’indépendance de la Banque centrale européenne, harmonisation par le haut des droits sociaux et des politiques d’égalité, arrêt des directives de libéralisation des services publics, sortie de l’OTAN, rejet des accords de libre-échange comme le TAFTA, etc. C’est le plan A. Sans cela, l’Europe court à sa perte.
Yanis Varoufakis: Les progressistes, en France, n’ont jamais commis cette erreur d’identifier la France avec l’État français. Pourquoi donc identifierions-nous l’Europe avec les institutions de l’Union européenne ? Les Européens veulent l’Europe et, en même temps, ils ont en horreur ses politiques ridicules ainsi que ses méthodes antidémocratiques. Ils méprisent le fait que, alors que les deux tiers des Européens sont favorables à l’interdiction des pesticides et des véhicules diesel, l’UE conspire pour autoriser le glyphosate tout en fermant les yeux sur le « dieselgate ». Nous devons donc démontrer aux Européens qu’il est parfaitement possible – même si ce n’est pas facile, bien sûr – de reprendre le contrôle des institutions de l’UE, de réaligner leurs politiques et leurs pratiques sur ce que souhaitent les Européens et de commencer le débat au niveau de base sur le type d’Union européenne démocratique que nous voulons.
REGARDS: Une mesure utile, urgente et qui peut changer la vie des citoyens européens?
Manuel Bompard: Abolir la directive des travailleurs détachés. Elle précarise chaque salarié ou artisan français puisqu’on peut désormais lui préférer un ressortissant d’un autre pays européen au droit social moins favorable. C’est une mesure dangereuse qui dresse les peuples les uns contre les autres. D’ailleurs, sur ce sujet aussi, les grands discours de Macron ont accouché d’une souris
Yanis Varoufakis: Un programme de relance verte fondé sur un investissement annuel de cinq cents milliards d’euros pendant cinq ans, financés par des obligations de la Banque européenne d’investissement. Les banques centrales européennes devront être prêtes à racheter ces obligations au cas où leurs rendements commenceraient à augmenter. Il faudra donc créer une Agence pour la transition verte européenne chargée d’identifier et de diriger ces projets de transition verte – qu’il s’agisse de l’énergie, des transports, de l’industrie et de l’agriculture. Ces « mesures » créatrices d’emplois seront à la base de la transition verte indispensable pour assurer le futur des Européens.
REGARDS: Peut-on vraiment changer l’orientation de l’Union européenne et avec qui ?
Manuel Bompard: Bien sûr. Mais ça ne sera pas un long fleuve tranquille. On ne combat pas l’euroligarchie sous domination allemande avec des pistolets à eau. Pour réussir le plan A, il faut une arme dans la négociation, un outil de dissuasion. C’est le plan B. C’est celui qui a manqué à Tsipras pour pouvoir appliquer sa politique. Conséquence ? C’est la Commission européenne qui lui dicte aujourd’hui sa politique, et c’est le peuple grec qui paye la facture. Des forces politiques font le même constat dans chaque pays d’Europe. C’est le cas de Podemos en Espagne ou du Bloc de gauche au Portugal, qui ont tous réalisé un score à deux chiffres à des élections nationales. C’est pourquoi nous nous sommes rassemblés dans le mouvement « Et maintenant le peuple ! » : pour mener ensemble la bataille des élections européennes. Malheureusement, en France, les listes fleurissent et les calculs politiciens semblent l’emporter sur l’ambition de faire bouger le rapport de forces en Europe. Mais je crois que les électrices et les électeurs sauront s’y retrouver.
Yanis Varoufakis: L’orientation de l’UE ne cesse de changer. Sauf sur un point : elle s’oriente toujours plus dans la direction d’un racisme rance et d’une fragmentation à laquelle aspirent l’internationale nationaliste. La question est donc : comment le changement peut-il être redirigé dans un sens humaniste et progressiste ? Après la capitulation de Syriza en 2015, DiEM25 croit que c’est une erreur d’aspirer à des alliances entre les pays – par exemple entre la France et la Grèce – ou entre des partis constitués et concourant à l’échelle nationale. La réorientation des politiques européennes nécessite un nouveau mouvement politique transnational que DiEM25 incarne déjà. À DiEM25, nous n’avons pas des branches françaises, allemandes, grecques et italiennes séparées, mais nous agissons dans tous les pays comme un mouvement unique et unifié – qui décide d’une seule voix de ses positions sur les retraites en France ou sur l’imposition en Grèce.
REGARDS: Face à la montée du nationalisme, de l’extrême droite, quelle réponse à la question migratoire ? Quelle campagne et quelle priorité pour les européennes ?
Manuel Bompard: L’élection européenne en France sera avant tout une élection nationale. Il s’agit d’un premier test électoral pour Macron. C’est donc une occasion en or de lui faire payer sa politique pour les riches, au détriment du plus grand nombre et de l’environnement. Ce faisant, c’est aussi l’Europe de la caste que l’on combat puisque Macron veut en assouvir tous les désirs. L’extrême droite progresse sur l’absence de remise en cause d’une construction européenne autoritaire et injuste, dans laquelle la droite et les sociaux-démocrates gouvernent ensemble depuis vingt ans. Elle se nourrit d’une crise migratoire dont sont responsables les politiques européennes qui sèment la guerre et la famine. La combattre, c’est donc identifier les vrais responsables de l’impasse dans laquelle est enfermée aujourd’hui l’Europe. C’est proposer une issue positive en faisant du mouvement « Et maintenant le peuple ! » la surprise des élections européennes
Yanis Varoufakis: À partir du moment où nous défendons le récit selon lequel il faut « reprendre le contrôle de nos frontières », nous devenons involontairement les complices de ceux qui ont construit leurs carrières politiques en faisant des immigrés des boucs-émissaires. La gauche ne doit pas tomber dans ce piège. Il est impératif d’organiser des routes sûres pour les migrants qui meurent souvent aujourd’hui sur leur trajet vers l’Europe. Certains d’entre eux sont même incarcérés par des « entrepreneurs » brutaux, bien souvent subventionnés par l’UE. Aussi, nous devons investir dans la lutte contre le changement climatique et les guerres néocoloniales qui forcent les populations à l’exil. C’est aussi pour cette raison qu’avec de nombreuses autres organisations – comme Générations en France, Razem en Pologne ou Alternativet au Danemark – Diem25 a mis en place le « Printemps européen ». Notre liste paneuropéenne, avec son programme unique, proposera un véritable New Deal européen. En mettant l’accent sur quatre objectifs fondamentaux – la démocratisation de l’Europe, la lutte contre la pauvreté et l’exploitation, la croissance partagée et la prospérité verte, et la solidarité internationale renforcée –, notre programme présentera jusqu’au moindre détail les changements institutionnels et politiques que nous proposons.
■ Propos recueillis par Fabien Perrier et Pierre Jacquemain
September 10, 2018
Ten Years After Lehman’s Collapse: What caused the Crash of 2008 is now shaping our post-modern 1930s – der Freitag
In the autumn of 2008 events unfolded in Wall Street that the crushing majority of people around the world had been led to believe could never occur. It was the financial equivalent of watching the sun spinning out of control soon after it rose above the horizon. Humanity watched on in collective disbelief. The ancient Greeks had a term for moments like that one: aporia – a state of intense bafflement urgently demanding a new model of the world we live in. The Crash of 2008 was such a moment. Suddenly, the world ceased to make sense in terms of what, a few weeks before, passed as conventional wisdom.
Before long, the repercussions were felt everywhere. The certainties created by decades of of establishment thinking were gone, along with around $40 trillion of equity globally, $14 trillion of household wealth in the US alone, 700,000 US jobs every month, countless repossessed homes everywhere; the list is as long as the numbers it includes are unfathomable. Even McDonald’s, for goodness’ sake, could not secure an overdraft from Bank of America!
The collective aporia intensified by the response of governments that had hitherto clinged tenaciously onto fiscal conservatism, as perhaps the 20th century’s last surviving ideology: the pouring of trillions of dollars, euros, yen etc. into a financial system which had been, until a few months before, on a huge roll, accumulating fabulous profits and provocatively professing to have found the pot of gold at the end of some globalised rainbow. And when that response proved too feeble, our Presidents and Prime Ministers, men and women with impeccable anti-statist neoliberal credentials, embarked upon a spree of nationalising banks, insurance companies and automakers that put even Lenin’s 1917 exploits to shame.
Ten years on, the crisis unleashed in Wall Street in 2008 is still with us. It takes different forms in different countries (i.e. a Great Depression in places like Greece, a scourge of middle class savers in countries like Germany, history’s greatest sponsor of brutal inequality in the United States, a permanent cause of geopolitical and trade tensions in Asia, Eastern Europe etc.). It migrates from continent to continent, from country to country. It morphs from an unemployment-generator to a deflation-machine, to another banking crisis, to a maximiser of trade and capital global imbalances.
Forcing Europe’s ruling elites into a series of laughable errors, it has succeeded in destroying the moral and political foundation of the European Union while, on the other side of the Atlantic, it has resulted in Donald Trump’s Presidency. The more our rulers proclaim the crisis’ taming the deeper the crisis is becoming. Indeed, the only beneficiaries from the crisis’ incessant mutations are the top 0.1% of earners, primarily the financiers, and what I once called the Nationalist International that is creating a new fascist, putridly xenophobic moment in Europe, America and beyond.
So, what happened in 2008?
To answer the question, we need to begin at the beginning – in 1944. As the war was drawing to a close, the New Dealers’ administration in Washington understood that the only way of avoiding the Great Depression’s return, once the guns had been silenced, was to recycle America’s surpluses to Europe and to Japan, and thus generate abroad the demand that would keep their own factories producing all the gleaming new products (washing machines, cars, television sets, passenger jets) that American industry would switch to.
The result was the project of dollarising Europe, of founding the European Union as a cartel of heavy industry, and of building up Japan – all within the context of a global currency union known as the Bretton Woods system: a fixed exchange rates regime anchored on the US dollar, featuring almost constant interest rates, boring banks (operating under severe capital controls) and American management of aggregate demand for global capitalism’s goods and services.
This dazzling design brought us a Golden Age of low unemployment, low inflation, high growth and massively diminished inequality. Alas, by the late 1960s Bretton Woods was dead in the water. Why? Because America lost its surpluses, slipped into a burgeoning twin deficit (trade and government budget) and could, therefore, no longer stabilise the global system by recycling surpluses it no longer had. Never too slow to accept reality, Washington killed off its finest creation: On August 15th, 1971 President Nixon announced the ejection of Europe and Japan from the dollar zone.
Nixon’s decision was founded on the Americans’ refreshing lack of deficit-phobia. Unwilling to rein in the deficits by imposing austerity (that would shrink the United States’ capacity to project hegemonic power around the world), Washington stepped on the accelerator boosting its deficits. Thus American markets worked like a giant vacuum cleaner absorbing massive net exports from Germany, Japan and, later China – ushering in the second phase of post-war growth (1980-2008). And how were the expanding American deficits paid? By a tsunami of other people’s money (around 70% of the profits of European, Japanese and Chinese net exporters) enthusiastically rushing into Wall seeking refuge and higher returns.
In effect, the 1970s inaugurated a remarkable Global Surplus Recycling Mechanism (which I have likened to a Global Minotaur elsewhere): the United States were absorbing a large portion of the Rest of the World’s surplus industrial products while Wall Street would administer the foreign capital flooding into the US in three ways. First, it provided credit to American consumers (whose wages stagnated as part of the same process that boosted the US profit rate and made Wall Street a destination for foreign capital more lucrative that Europe or Japan). Secondly, it channelled direct investment into US corporations and, of course, thirdly, it financed the purchase of US Treasury Bills (i.e. funded the American government deficits).
But for Wall Street to act as this ‘magnet’ of other people’s capital, and perform the role of recycling other people’s surpluses so as to pay for America’s deficits, it had to be unshackled from the New Deal and Bretton Woods era stringent regulations. Institutionalised greed, wholesale de-regulation, the infamous ‘revolving doors’, the exotic derivatives etc. were mere symptoms of this brave new global recycling mechanism. Financialisation was upon us, Europe’s financial centres joined in enthusiastically and, after 1991, an additional two billion workers (from the former Soviet Union, China and India) entered the global proletariat producing new output that boosted imbalanced trade flows – Globalisation had begun!
In Globalisation’s wake, the EU created its common currency. The reason the EU needed a common currency was that, as all cartels, it had to keep the prices of its main oligopolistic industries stable across Europe’s single market. To do this, it was necessary to fix exchange rates within its jurisdiction, as they had been fixed during the Bretton Woods era. However, from 1972 to the early 1990s each EU attempt to fix European exchange rates had failed spectacularly. Eventually, the EU decided to go the whole hog: to establish a single currency. This it did within the supportive environment of (grossly imbalanced yet temporarily impressive) global stability that the US-anchored Global Surplus Recycling Mechanism maintained. Alas, in its infinite inanity, the EU created the euro on the basis of a delicious paradox: A Central Bank (the European Central Bank) without a government to have its back, and nineteen governments without a central bank to have their back. Effectively, the ECB would be supplying a single currency to the banks of nineteen countries, whose governments would have to salvage these banks, at a time of crisis, without a central bank that could support them!
Meanwhile, Wall Street, the City and the French and German banks were taking advantage of their central position in the US-anchored global recycling system to build colossal pyramids of private money on the back of the net profits flowing into the United States from the Rest of the World. This added much energy to the recycling scheme, as it fuelled an ever-accelerating level of demand within the United States, in Europe and Asia. It also brought about the de-coupling of financial capital flows from the underlying trade flows.
When, in 2008, Wall Street’s pyramids of private money auto-combusted, and turned into ashes, Wall Street’s capacity to continue ‘closing’ the global recycling loop vanished. America’s banks could no longer harness the United States’ twin deficits for the purposes of financing enough demand within America to keep the net exports of the Rest of the World going. To boot, Europe’s common currency came unstuck following shockwaves it did not possess the shock absorbers to withstand.
From that dark moment onwards, the world economy, especially Europe’s, would find it impossible to regain its poise.
Taking stock: Socialism for bankers, austerity for the many, and the inexorable rise of the Nationalist International
Most of my German friends tell me that, to this day, they don’t get it: How is it that Deutsche Bank, and the rest of the German banks, went, effectively, bust in 2008? How can any economic sector go, within 24 hours, from making zillions to insolvency, demanding massive taxpayer bailouts. The answer is as simple as it is devastating.
Consider Germany’s banks and exporters back in the summer of 2007. Germany’s national accounts confirm Germany’s large trade surplus with the United States. In the month of August of 2007, to be precise, German net export income from selling Mercedes-Benzes and the like to American consumers was a cool $5 billion. What Germany’s national accounts do not, however, show was the real behind-the-scenes drama, the real action.
From the early 1990s and until 2007, Wall Street bankers manufactured quasi-money toxic derivatives and succeeded in ensuring that their market price was rising fast. Frankfurt’s bankers were dying to buy these lucrative derivatives and did so with dollars that they were borrowing from… Wall Street. In August 2007, Wall Street entered its annus horribilis (which culminated in September 2008 with Lehman’s collapse) when, as it was inevitable, the price of these derivatives began to fall. German bankers became apoplectic when their panicking New York pals began to call in their dollar debts. They needed dollars in a hurry but no one would buy the mountain of US toxic derivatives they had purchased. This is how, from one moment to the next, German banks swimming in oceans of paper profit found themselves in desperate need of dollars they did not have. Could Germany’s bankers not borrow dollars from Germany’s exporters to meet their dollar obligations? They could, but how would the $5 billion the latter had earned during that August help when the German bankers’ outstanding debt to Wall Street, that the Americans were now calling in, exceeded $1000 billion?
In summary, what had happened, globally, was that imbalanced dollar-denominated financial flows, which had initially grown on the back of the US trade deficit, ‘succeeded’ in de-coupling themselves from the underlying economic values and trade volumes. It would not be far-fetched to say that they almost achieved escape velocity and nearly left Planet Earth behind (once the bankers invented, created and… kept on their own balance sheets toxic dollar-denominated instruments) – before crashing down violently in 2008.
From that moment onwards, politicians went into overdrive to shift the losses from those who created them (the bankers) onto the shoulders of the innocent (middle class debtors, waged labourers, the unemployed, those on disability payments and the taxpayers who could not afford to set up off-shore accounting units). In Europe, in particular, one proud nation was turned against another by political elites determined to disguise: (A) a crisis caused by an alliance of Northern and Southern bankers and other rent-seeking oligarchs, into (B) a clash caused by the profligate Southerners and ant-like Northerners or as as crisis of over-generous German, Greek, Italian etc. social welfare systems.
It takes no genius to put all this together and to grasp why, in the absence of a serious, effective, articulate Left, nationalism, racism and generalised misanthropy is now triumphing in the United States and, especially, in Europe.
Where are we now?
Back in 1967, John Kenneth Galbraith described how capitalism had shifted from a market society to a hierarchical system owned by a cartel of corporations: the Technostructure, as he called it. Run by a global elite that usurped markets, fixed prices and controlled demand, the Technostructure replaced the New Deal’s full employment objective with that of GDP growth.
From the late 1970s onwards, that Technostructure extended its realm by adding the black magic of financialisation to its structure (through, for example, turning car companies like General Motors into large speculative financial corporations, that also made some cars!), magnifying by a dizzying factor its power and, ultimately, replacing the aim of GDP growth with that of ‘financial resilience’: enduring paper asset inflation for the few and permanent austerity for the many.
The result was the strengthening of the Technostructure’s dollar-based hegemony in a manner that no macroeconomic approach (limited, by design, to looking at the national accounts of states) can even recognise as, from the 1990s onwards, the ‘real action’ was taking place in the balance sheets of the global financiers.
In the end, this financialised Technostucture was brought to its knees by the weight of its hubris. That’s what the Crash of 2008 was all about. Two powers proceeded to save the financialised Technostructure from itself: The US government, and in particular the trillions of dollars that the Federal Reserve pumped into European private and central banks (through what is known in the trade as ‘swap lines’). And China, whose skilful economic management boosted domestic investment to unheard of levels, kept on its books worthless dollar assets that many others were shedding, and even went so far as to propose the elimination of trade imbalances via the adoption of a multilateral clearing union of the type that John Maynard Keynes had proposed at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 (only to be denied by the Obama administration, who preferred to keep the dollar’s privilege intact at the expense of a seriously unstable capitalism).
While the Technostructure was saved by two governments (America’s and China’s), those in authority blamed government debt, the cost of welfare, high wages, inflexible labour markets (i.e. the survival of some trades unions struggling to prevent the uberisation of waged workers) – and embarked on a massive, self-defeating austerity drive causing avoidable, industrial-scale suffering. Based on the toxic fantasy of apolitical macroeconomic management, the Technostructure is, to this day, shrouding in techno-bubble the undeclared class war with which the establishment has been shifting all the risks and all the losses onto the weak, instructing them to “suffer what they must”, delivering whole populations (in the absence of a progressive internationalist alternative) into the arms of a post-modern fascism.
Ten years on, the Technostructure is still hanging on to the levers of power. But, nevertheless, the neoliberal populist myth (i.e. the myth that wholesale deregulation will make everyone’s dreams come true under the rule of democracy and… Montesquieu), on which it used to rely for manufacturing consent, is now dead. Is it any wonder that racism and geopolitical tensions are all the rage? Was it not inevitable, as some of us have been warning since before 2008, that a Nationalist International would soon gain power, on the back of an explicitly xenophobic narrative, in the White House, in Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, shortly in Germany (once Mrs Merkel is shoved aside)?
And so, here we are: At our generation’s 1930 moment. Soon after the Crash and with a fascist moment upon us. The pressing question facing this generation is a harsh one that, while no young person deserves to face, none of us have the right to evade: When and how will we rise up against the Nationalist International bred across the West by the Technostructure’s inane handling of its inevitable crisis?
THE ABOVE ARTICLE IS THE ORIGINAL ENGLISH TEXT OF THIS OP-ED IN DER FREITAG
References
John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, Princeton, 1967, 2007, with a foreword by James K. Galbraith
Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a decade of financial crises changed the world, London: Allen Lane, 2018
Yanis Varoufakis, The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the World Economy, London: Zed Books, 2011,2013,2015
Yanis Varoufakis, And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Austerity, Europe and the Threat to Global Stability, London: Bodley Head, 2016
Im Reich der Gier – der Freitag
Was im Herbst 2008 an der Wall Street geschah, hatten die allermeisten Menschen bis dahin für unmöglich gehalten, schließlich hatte man ihnen jahrelang weisgemacht, dass etwas Derartiges schlichtweg nicht passieren könnte. Es war, als ob man dabei zuguckt, wie die Sonne, kurz nachdem sie am Horizont aufgeht, komplett aus ihrer Bahn trudelt und abstürzt. Die Menschheit sah fassungslos zu.
Wann und wie stehst DU gegen die nationalistische Internationale auf?
Die alten Griechen hatten einen Begriff für Augenblicke wie diesen: aporía – ein Zustand vollständiger Verblüffung und Ratlosigkeit, ein dringendes Bedürfnis nach einem neuen Erklärungsmodell für die Welt, in der wir leben. Der Crash von 2008 war ein solcher Moment. Plötzlich funktionierte die Welt nicht mehr nach den Regeln, die ein paar Wochen zuvor noch als selbstverständlich durchgegangen waren.
Es dauerte nicht lange, bis die Auswirkungen überall zu spüren waren. Gewissheiten, die auf der jahrzehntealten Denke des Establishments basierten, lösten sich in Luft auf, zusammen mit Vermögenswerten in Höhe von rund 40 Billionen US-Dollar weltweit und 14 Billionen US-Dollar an Vermögen privater Haushalte allein in den USA. Dort gingen 700.000 Arbeitsplätze pro Monat verloren, unzählige Hauskäufer mussten ihr Heim wieder aufgeben, weil sie ihren Kredit nicht bezahlen konnten; die Liste ist so lang, wie die Zahlen, die sie enthält, unfassbar sind. Sogar McDonald’s – wie krass ist das denn? – bekam von der Bank of America keinen Dispokredit mehr.
Diese kollektive Aporie wurde durch die Reaktion der Regierungen verstärkt, die beharrlich an neoliberaler Wirtschaftspolitik festgehalten hatten, der vielleicht letzten Ideologie des 20. Jahrhunderts: Billionen von Dollar, Euro oder Yen wurden in ein Finanzsystem gepumpt, das einige Monate zuvor noch wie am Schnürchen gelaufen war, fabelhafte Profite abgeworfen hatte und dessen Protagonisten von sich behauptet hatten, den sprichwörtlichen Topf mit Gold am Ende des Globalisierungs-Regenbogens gefunden zu haben. Als dieses Vorgehen sich als nicht ausreichend erwies, begannen unsere Premierminister und Präsidentinnen – Männer und Frauen mit tadellosen anti-etatistischen Referenzen – eine groß angelegte Verstaatlichung von Banken, Versicherungsunternehmen und Autoherstellern, die sogar Lenins Heldentaten von 1917 in den Schatten stellt.
Ein wanderndes Monster
Zehn Jahre später begleitet uns die Krise, die 2008 in der Wall Street begann, noch immer. Sie nimmt an unterschiedlichen Orten verschiedene Gestalten an, tritt in Ländern wie Griechenland als Große Depression, in Staaten wie Deutschland als Geißel von Mittelschicht-Sparern auf, als der historisch größte Verstärker von brutaler Ungleichheit in den USA oder als stete Quelle für geopolitische Spannungen und Handelsauseinandersetzungen in Asien und Osteuropa. Die Krise wandert von Kontinent zu Kontinent, von Land zu Land, erzeugt hier Arbeitslosigkeit, dort Deflation, verursacht die nächste Bankenkrise und vergrößert die weltweiten Handels- und Kapital-Ungleichgewichte.
Europas herrschende Elite hat diese Krise zu einer Reihe von lachhaften Fehlern getrieben und es so geschafft, die moralischen und politischen Grundlagen der Europäischen Union zu zerstören. Auf der anderen Seite des Atlantiks ermöglichte sie Donald Trumps Präsidentschaft. Je mehr unsere Regierenden behaupten, die Krise im Griff zu haben, umso tiefer wird sie. Die Einzigen, die von all diesen andauernden Mutationen der Krise profitieren, sind die reichsten 0,1 Prozent, vor allem die Leute im Finanzsektor, und die nationalistische Internationale, die in Europa, Amerika und darüber hinaus eine neue faschistische, grässlich ausländerfeindliche Ära prägt.
Um diese Frage zu beantworten, müssen wir am Anfang beginnen – 1944. Als der Krieg sich dem Ende zuneigte, erkannte die New-Deal-Regierung in Washington, D. C., dass es nur einen einzigen Weg gab, wie sich eine Rückkehr der Großen Depression der 1930er verhindern ließ: Amerikas Überschüsse in Europa und Japan zu „recyceln“ und so im Ausland jene Nachfrage zu schaffen, die US-Fabriken am Laufen halten würde, um all die Waschmaschinen, Fernsehgeräte und Passagierflugzeuge zu produzieren, auf die die US-Industrie nach Kriegsende umstellen würde.
Dieses Jazzensemble ist durch und durch skandinavisch. Schlagzeuger Emil Brandqvist stammt aus Schweden, Pianist Tuomas Turunen aus Finnland und Bassist Max Thornberg ist ebenfalls Schwede. Mit “Within a Dream” erscheint ihr viertes Album, und auch ihre Musik ist typisch: geprägt von unaufgeregten, meditativen Klängen und nordischer Melancholie
Heraus kam das Projekt der Dollarisierung Europas, der Gründung der EU als Kartell der Schwerindustrie, des Aufbaus von Japan, alles innerhalb einer globalen Währungsunion, bekannt als Bretton-Woods-System: ein auf dem Dollar basierendes System fixer Wechselkurse mit fast konstanten Zinsen; langweilige Banken, die strikten Kapitalverkehrskontrollen unterlagen; die Steuerung der Gesamtnachfrage nach den Gütern und Dienstleistungen des globalen Kapitalismus durch die USA.
Diese Anordnung der Weltwirtschaft war spektakulär, sie brachte uns ein goldenes Zeitalter mit niedriger Arbeitslosigkeit, niedriger Inflation, starkem Wachstum und deutlich sinkender Ungleichheit. Doch leider kam das Bretton-Woods-System schon in den späten 1960ern an sein Ende. Warum? Weil die USA keine Überschüsse mehr erwirtschafteten und in ein doppeltes Handels- und Haushaltsdefizit rutschten. Ohne Überschüsse konnten sie das globale System nicht mehr durch deren Recycling stabilisieren. Ohne lange zu zögern, beendeten sie ihr segensreichstes Unterfangen: Am 15. August 1971 verkündete Präsident Richard Nixon den Ausschluss Europas und Japans aus dem Dollar-Raum.
Nixons Entscheidung gründete auf einem erfrischenden Mangel an Angst vor Defiziten, wie er Amerika auszeichnet. Washington war nicht willens, die Defizite durch Sparmaßnahmen auszugleichen, denn das hätte die Fähigkeit der USA beschränkt, in aller Welt als Hegemon aufzutreten. Lieber trat Washington aufs Gas und ließ seine Defizite weiter ansteigen. Die amerikanischen Märkte funktionierten wie ein gigantischer Staubsauger, der gigantische Netto-Exporte aus Deutschland, Japan und später China aufsaugte – und damit die zweite Phase des Nachkriegswachstums – zwischen 1980 und 2008 – einleitete. Wie wurden die wachsenden US-Defizite finanziert? Mittels eines Tsunamis aus dem Geld anderer Leute: Rund 70 Prozent der Profite europäischer, japanischer und chinesischer Netto-Exporteure strömten begeistert an die Wall Street und suchten dort Zuflucht und höheren Profit.
Tatsächlich fiel so in den 1970ern der Startschuss für einen „globalen Überschuss-Recycling-Mechanismus“ (an anderer Stelle habe ich ihn mit einem globalen „Minotaurus“ verglichen): Die USA absorbierten einen großen Anteil der industriellen Warenüberschüsse aus dem Rest der Welt, während die Wall Street das Kapital, das in die USA strömte, auf drei verschiedene Weisen nutzte. Zum einen ermöglichte sie Kredite an US-Verbraucher, deren Gehälter und Löhne als Folge desselben Prozesses stagnierten, der die US-Profitrate hochtrieb und die Wall Street für ausländisches Kapital lukrativer machte als Europa oder Japan. Zweitens wurden Direktinvestitionen in US-Unternehmen gelenkt und drittens der Kauf von US-Staatsanleihen gefördert, was für die Finanzierung der amerikanischen Haushaltsdefizite sorgte.
Unsägliche Einfalt
Aber damit die Wall Street als derartiger Magnet für das Kapital anderer Leute funktionieren, die Überschüsse anderer recyceln und so Amerikas Defizite ausgleichen konnte, musste sie von den strengen Regulierungen der New-Deal- und Bretton-Woods-Ära abgekoppelt werden. Institutionalisierte Gier, Deregulierung im großen Stil, exotische Derivate und so fort waren nur Symptome dieses schönen neuen globalen Recycling-Mechanismus.
Vorhang auf für die Finanzialisierung! Europas Finanzzentren machten mit großem Enthusiasmus mit, und nach 1991 stießen zwei Milliarden Arbeiter aus der früheren Sowjetunion, China und Indien zum globalen Proletariat hinzu, um jenen neuen Output zu produzieren, der die einseitigen Handelsströme weiter verstärkte – voilà, die Globalisierung hatte begonnen!
In ihrem Fahrwasser schuf die EU ihre gemeinsame Währung. Die brauchte sie, weil sie, wie alle Kartelle, die Preise der wichtigsten industriellen Oligopole im europäischen Binnenmarkt stabil halten wollte. Dafür war es notwendig, die Wechselkurse wie während der Bretton-Woods-Ära zu stabilisieren. Nun war aber zwischen 1972 und den frühen 1990ern jeder Versuch, europäische Wechselkurse zu fixieren, kläglich gescheitert. Also beschloss die EU, aufs Ganze zu gehen und eine gemeinsame Währung einzuführen. Das tat sie innerhalb jenes günstigen Umfelds von zeitweise beeindruckender globaler Stabilität, das der „globale Überschuss-Recycling-Mechanismus“ stützte, das aber in Wahrheit mit großen Ungleichgewichten einherging. Leider schuf die EU in ihrer unsäglichen Einfalt den Euro auf Basis eines Paradoxons, das man sich auf der Zunge zergehen lassen muss: eine Zentralbank, hinter der keine sie stützende Regierung steht, sowie 19 Regierungen ohne Zentralbank, die sie stützen könnte. Die EZB versorgte also die Banken von 19 Ländern mit einer gemeinsamen Währung, deren Regierungen in einer Krise dieselben Banken retten müssten, ohne eine Zentralbank zu haben, die sie unterstützt!
Unterdessen nutzten die Wall Street, die Londoner City sowie die französischen und deutschen Banken ihre zentrale Position im US-gestützten globalen Recycling-System, um aus den Nettogewinnen, die aus dem Rest der Welt in die USA flossen, kolossale Kartenhäuser aus privatem Kapital zu bauen. Das förderte das Recycling-Modell, da es eine immer schneller steigende Nachfrage in den USA, in Europa und in Asien befeuerte. Und es führte zur Abkopplung der Finanzkapitalströme von den zugrunde liegenden Handelsströmen.
Als die Privatgeld-Kartenhäuser der Wall Street 2008 wie von selbst zusammenfielen, konnte die Wall Street den globalen Recycling-Kreislauf nicht mehr „schließen“. Amerikas Banken konnten die Zwillingsdefizite der USA, das Außenhandels- und das Haushaltsdefizit, nicht länger dafür nutzen, genug Nachfrage innerhalb der USA zu erzeugen und damit die Netto-Exporte des Rests der Welt zu stützen. Zudem hatten die Schockwellen, mangels Stoßdämpfer, der gemeinsamen Währung, dem Euro, ordentlich zugesetzt.
Seit diesem finsteren Moment ist es der Weltwirtschaft – und im Besonderen der europäischen Wirtschaft – nicht gelungen, sich aufzurappeln und zu einer wie auch immer gearteten Normalität zurückzukehren.
Womit wir es seitdem zu tun haben, ist schnell gesagt: Sozialismus für Banker, Austerität für die Massen und der unaufhaltsame Aufstieg der nationalistischen Internationalen.
Yanis Varoufakis Foto: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Die meisten meiner deutschen Freunde können es bis heute nicht verstehen: Wie konnte es passieren, dass die Deutsche Bank und der Rest der deutschen Banken 2008 praktisch pleitegingen? Wie kann eine Branche innerhalb von 24 Stunden vom Jonglieren mit Milliarden in die Insolvenz abstürzen, sodass die Steuerzahler sie retten müssen? Die Antwort ist so einfach wie niederschmetternd.
Nehmen wir die deutschen Banken und Exporteure im Sommer 2007: Deutschlands volkswirtschaftliche Gesamtrechnung weist einen großen Überschuss im Handel mit den USA aus. Genauer gesagt, liegt Deutschlands Export-Einkommen durch den Verkauf von Mercedes-Benz-Autos und ähnlichen Waren an amerikanische Verbraucher im August 2007 bei entspannten fünf Milliarden Dollar. Was die deutsche volkswirtschaftliche Gesamtrechnung aber nicht zeigt, ist das wahre Drama hinter den Kulissen: das, was wirklich vor sich ging.
Zwischen Anfang der 1990er und 2007 hatten Wall-Street-Banker Unmengen toxischer Quasi-Geld-Derivate zusammengeschustert und es geschafft, dass deren Marktpreise stark anstiegen. Die Banker in Frankfurt am Main wiederum waren scharf darauf, diese lukrativen Derivate zu kaufen. Sie taten das mit Dollars, die sie sich dafür ausliehen, und zwar von – der Wall Street.
Im August 2007 dann begann das Horrorjahr der Wall Street, das im September 2008 mit der Lehman-Pleite seinen Höhepunkt erreichte. Wie es unvermeidlich gewesen war, begann der Preis der Derivate zu fallen. Die deutschen Banker traf der Schlag, als ihre in Panik verfallenen New Yorker Kollegen ihre Dollarschulden einzutreiben begannen. Die deutschen Banker brauchten sehr schnell Dollars, aber niemand wollte den Berg an toxischen US-Derivaten, den sie gekauft hatten, haben.
Die Hetze der Elite
Das ist der Grund dafür, dass die deutschen Banken, die auf dem Papier über Gewinne im Überfluss verfügten, von einem Augenblick zum anderen dringend Geld in einer Währung benötigten, die sie nicht besaßen. Hätten sie nicht US-Dollars von Deutschlands Exporteuren leihen können, um ihre Dollar-Obligationen zu erfüllen?
Sicher, nur reichte das bei Weitem nicht aus: Was konnten die fünf Milliarden US-Dollar aus Exporten im August helfen, wo die Außenstände der deutschen Banker bei der Wall Street doch mehr als 1.000 Milliarden US-Dollar betrugen?
Man könnte das, was hier im globalen Maßstab vor sich ging, so zusammenfassen: Einseitigen, in US-Dollar denominierten Finanzströmen, die ursprünglich aufgrund des US-Handelsdefizits gewachsen waren, „gelang“ es, sich von den sie ermöglichenden wirtschaftlichen Werten und Handelsvolumen zu lösen. Die Banker hatten toxische, in US-Dollar notierte Papiere erfunden und diese dann in ihre eigenen Bilanzen geschrieben. Dieses Vorgehen beschleunigten sie derart, dass sie die Schwerkraft fast schon überwunden hatten und ins All hochgeschossen waren – nur um 2008 dann dramatisch abzustürzen.
Von diesem Augenblick an setzten die Politiker alles daran, die Verluste von den Verursachern, den Bankern, auf unschuldige Dritte abzuwälzen: Mittelschicht-Schuldner, lohnabhängige Arbeiter und Angestellte, Erwerbslose, Menschen mit Behinderung und Steuerzahler, die es sich nicht leisten konnten, Depots in Steueroasen zu unterhalten. Vor allem in Europa wurde ein Land gegen das andere aufgehetzt – und zwar von politischen Eliten, die entschlossen waren, die Wahrheit auf den Kopf zu stellen. Aus einer von Bankern in Nord und Süd verursachten Krise machten sie einen Konflikt zwischen arbeitsscheuen Südländern und hart arbeitenden Nordeuropäern, oder eine Krise von angeblich allzu großzügigen Wohlfahrtssystemen in Deutschland, Italien oder Griechenland. Man muss kein Genie sein, um die Puzzleteile zusammenzusetzen und zu verstehen, warum – angesichts des Fehlens einer ernsthaften, wirkungsvollen, mit einer Stimme sprechenden Linken – in den USA und vor allem in Europa Nationalismus, Rassismus und eine allgemeine Menschenfeindlichkeit triumphieren.
1967 beschrieb der Ökonom John Kenneth Galbraith, wie der Kapitalismus sich von einer Marktgesellschaft in ein hierarchisches System verwandelt hatte, das von einem Unternehmens-Kartell kontrolliert wurde: der „Technostruktur“, wie er das nannte. Von einer globalen Elite angeführt, die Märkte an sich riss, Preise festsetzte und die Nachfrage kontrollierte, ersetzte die Technostruktur das Ziel des New Deal – Vollbeschäftigung – durch das eines wachsenden Bruttoinlandsprodukts (BIP).
Seit Ende der 1970er erweiterte die Technostruktur ihren Machtbereich, indem sie sich die schwarze Magie der Finanzialisierung einverleibte. Ein Beispiel dafür ist die Umwandlung von Autoherstellern wie General Motors in große spekulative Finanzunternehmen, die nebenbei auch noch ein paar Autos produzieren. Damit vergrößerte die Technostruktur ihre Macht um einen schwindelerregenden Faktor und ersetzte schließlich das Ziel des BIP-Wachstums durch „finanzielle Resilienz“: anhaltende Vermögenszuwächse für die wenigen und dauerhafte Sparpolitik für die vielen.
Dies stärkte die auf dem Dollar beruhende Hegemonie der Technostruktur in einem Ausmaß, wie es kein makroökonomischer Ansatz nachvollziehen kann, weil sich Makroökonomie per se auf die Volkswirtschaft von Staaten beschränkt – das eigentliche Geschehen hingegen fand seit den 1990er Jahren in den Bilanzen globaler Finanziers statt.
Am Ende gerieten Finanzialisierung und Technostruktur wegen des Ausmaßes ihrer eigenen Hybris an den Rand des Untergangs. Zwei Mächte gingen daran, das ganze Konglomerat vor sich selbst zu retten: zum einen die US-Regierung und vor allem die Billionen von Dollar, die die US-Notenbank Federal Reserve (Fed) durch im Branchenjargon swap lines genannte währungspolitische Abkommen in europäische Privat- und Zentralbanken pumpte. Zum anderen intervenierte China, dessen kluges Wirtschaftsmanagement für Inlandsinvestitionen von nie dagewesenem Ausmaß sorgte; China behielt wertlose Dollar-Vermögenswerte, die viele andere abstießen, und ging sogar so weit, eine multilaterale Clearing-Union anzuregen, wie sie John Maynard Keynes auf der Bretton-Woods-Konferenz 1944 vorgeschlagen hatte und wie sie Handelsungleichgewichte auszugleichen vermag. Doch die US-Regierung unter Barack Obama lehnte Chinas Vorschlag ab. Sie zog es vor, das Privileg des Dollars nicht anzutasten und dafür einen höchst instabilen Kapitalismus in Kauf zu nehmen.
Wir müssen uns wehren
Während die Technostruktur von zwei Regierungen, der der USA und der Chinas, gerettet wurde, machten die Herrschenden alles Mögliche für die Krise verantwortlich: die Kosten der Sozialstaatssysteme, zu hohe Löhne, vermeintlich zu starre Arbeitsmärkte oder Gewerkschaften, die noch gegen die weitere Prekarisierung von Arbeiterinnen und Arbeitern kämpften. Jene selbstzerstörerische Sparpolitik kolossalen Ausmaßes, für die die Regierenden verantwortlich zeichneten, brachte vermeidbares massenhaftes Leid und Unrecht mit sich.
Jene brandgefährliche Fantasie von einer apolitischen Wirtschaftspolitik verhüllt bis heute den Klassenkampf, mit dem das Establishment alle Risiken und Verluste auf die Schwachen abwälzt und von ihnen verlangt, sich „in das Unvermeidliche zu ergeben“. Weil eine progressive internationalistische Alternative fehlt, treiben die Mächtigen jener Technostruktur ganze Bevölkerungen in die offenen Arme eines postmodernen Faschismus.
Zehn Jahre nach dem Kollaps von Lehman Brothers und jenem Moment der aporía hält sich die Technostruktur immer noch an den Schalthebeln der Macht. Aber der neoliberale populistische Mythos, auf den sie sich bezog, um konsensfähig zu sein, der ist am Ende – so etwa die Vorstellung, in einer vollkommen deregulierten Wirtschaft könnten die Wünsche aller auf demokratischem Wege in Erfüllung gehen.
Überrascht es da, dass Rassismus und geopolitische Spannungen in aller Welt überhandnehmen? War es nicht unvermeidlich, wie manche bereits seit 2008 warnten, dass eine nationalistische Internationale an Zustimmung gewinnen würde? Dass ihre xenophoben Parolen an die Macht gelangen würden, im Weißen Haus, in Italien, Österreich, Polen, Ungarn, in den Niederlanden und vielleicht bald auch in Deutschland, sobald Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel zur Seite geräumt worden ist?
Wir sind an einem Punkt angelangt, der für unsere Generation den 1930er Jahren entspricht – kurz nach dem Crash, im Angesicht eines faschistischen Momentums. Die für diese Generation drängende Frage ist hart. Aber auch wenn kein junger Mensch es verdient hat, mit solch einer harten Frage konfrontiert zu werden, so haben wir alle doch kein Recht, uns ihrer Beantwortung zu entziehen: Wann und wie werden wir gegen die nationalistische Internationale aufstehen, die im gesamten Westen durch den hirnverbrannten Umgang der Technostruktur mit ihrer unvermeidlichen Krise entstanden ist?
Yanis Varoufakis ist Mitgründer der Bewegung DiEM25 und will in Griechenland, wo er 2015 Finanzminister war, demnächst mit der Partei MeRA25 antreten. Varoufakis ist Ökonom und hat unter anderem die Bücher Der globale Minotaurus. Amerika und die Zukunft der Weltwirtschaft und zuletzt Die ganze Geschichte. Meine Auseinandersetzung mit Europas Establishment veröffentlicht
Übersetzung: Carola Torti
September 9, 2018
September 5, 2018
Democracy, Socialism, Europe and Scottish Independence – four clips on STV
PART 1 – WHY SOCIALISM?
Interviewer: You are meeting with Jeremy Corbyn to discuss socialism. Why?
Varoufakis: Because democracy needs a healthy democratic socialist movement to be part of the political process in order to be healthy
PART 2 – REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
PART 3 – DEMOCRATS MUST GET TOGETHER ACROSS PARTY POLITICAL AND NATIONAL BORDERLINES
PART 4 – THE SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE DILEMMA
August 30, 2018
The three tribes of austerity: enemies of big government, Germany’s social democrats, and tax-cutting Republicans – op-ed in Project Syndicate
No policy is as self-defeating during recessionary times as the pursuit of a budget surplus for the purpose of containing public debt – austerity, for short. So, as the world approaches the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it is appropriate to ask why austerity proved so popular with Western political elites following the financial sector’s implosion in 2008. The economic case against austerity is cut and dried: An economic downturn, by definition, implies shrinking private-sector expenditure. A government that cuts public spending in response to falling tax revenues inadvertently depresses national income (which is the sum of private and public spending) and, inevitably, its own revenues. It thus defeats the original purpose of cutting the deficit.Clearly, there must be another, non-economic, rationale for supporting austerity. In fact, those favoring austerity are divided among three rather different tribes, each promoting it for its own reasons.
The first, and best known, “austerian” tribe is motivated by the tendency to view the state as no different from a business or a household that must tighten its belt during bad times. Overlooking the crucial interdependence between a government’s expenditure and (tax) income (from which businesses and households are blissfully free), they make the erroneous intellectual leap from private parsimony to public austerity. Of course, this is no arbitrary error; it is powerfully motivated by an ideological commitment to small government, which in turn veils a more sinister class interest in redistributing risks and losses to the poor.
A second, less recognized, austerian tribe can be found within European social democracy. To take one towering example, when the 2008 crisis erupted, Germany’s finance ministry was in the hands of Peer Steinbrück, a leading member of the Social Democratic Party. Almost immediately, Steinbrück prescribed a dose of austerity as Germany’s optimal response to the Great Recession.
Moreover, Steinbrück championed a constitutional amendment that would ban all future German governments from deviating from austerity, no matter how deep the economic downturn. Why, one may ask, would a social democrat turn self-defeating austerity into a constitutional edict during capitalism’s worst crisis in decades?
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